1990 Nintendo World Championships

I couldn't believe it when I saw this. I participated at this championship. It was amazing. The Nintendo World Championships was a triathlon for gamers at the time. Each participant had to go through three challenges.

• Go through Super Mario Bros. and collect 50 coins as fast as possible.
• Complete a level of Rad Racer as quickly as possible.
• Use your remaining amount of time to collect as many points in Tetris as possible.

The individual scores would then be multiplied by some factor and the individual products would be added to give you your great score. Here's a cool link talking more about the tournament.

There was also Powerfest which was strongly associated with the championships. This was just a big Nintendo show.

The best strategy was to simply complete the first two tasks as quickly as possible then generate as many points as possible in Tetris by completing four line Tetrii. Your Tetris score was multiplied by an unbelievable factor of 12 or 24. So obviously the largest amount of weight was placed on your Tetris skill. Read the Wiki here.

I participated in this competition and made it to the semi-finalist round. It was a badass time. Way better than what LAN parties are like today.

So someone is selling a cartridge on eBay for $15k. Absolutely ridiculous.

Check out this video telling the story.